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Sunday, February 5, 2012

A storyteller's book

Strange Horizons has a long, thoughtful review of Anne Sheldon's The Bone Spindle, by Sofia Samatar. She remarks, "I would have liked to see more from Anne Sheldon in this book, and I will look forward to reading more of her work" and concludes:
The Bone Spindle includes images as well as words: the illustrations are based on photographs of looms, spinning wheels, yarn and hands busy with knitting or embroidery. They complement the written words and add another thread to Sheldon's tapestry of old, new and reinterpreted stories. This collection would make a beautiful gift for a knitter or weaver, but it's also a storyteller's book, so full of voices that it seems to beg to be read aloud. And of course, when a piece is spoken, the way it's arranged on the page becomes less important. The oral mode, I suspect, is the best way to experience Anne Sheldon's "story-poems."
Those who've had the pleasure of hearing Anne read (at WisCon and elsewhere) would no doubt heartily concur with that.

1 comment:

  1. I bought The Bone Spindle because of the review it got on Strange Horizons (also, I'm writing a story about Arachne right now and was intrigued).

    I even wrote a blog post discussing it, if you'd like to peek: http://105creations.com/2012/02/04/should-ebooks-have-drm/ I'm very pleased to learn about Aqueduct Press and its DRM-free policy on ebooks.

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